Tolerance of Sin

Every year, 2.8 million people around the globe die from alcohol abuse or misuse. The alcohol industry racks up an annual revenue of $1.5 trillion. Alcohol is also the leading cause of death globally for people age 15–49. It causes more than half of the 1.35 million traffic fatalities every year and is involved in the majority of homicides and cases of domestic violence.

Furthermore, despite the widespread belief that moderate alcohol consumption is good for your health, the only amount of alcohol consumption that doesn’t carry significant risk to your overall health is none.

Fifteen years ago, Sherry Hoppen was a mom of three, a ministry leader in her church, and a volunteer at her local pregnancy center when her younger brother was killed in a drunk driving accident. The tragedy triggered her own slow spiral into alcoholism—one that nearly destroyed her marriage and her life.

Over the next decade, Hoppen evolved from a casual drinker to an addict who barely recognized herself, always secretly drinking or causing scenes at family holidays due to her dependence. Like many who struggle, she thought she could “fix” herself and moderate her drinking, even as she daily hid vodka-filled water bottles inside her purse.

Hoppen said, “I was scared to tell anybody because I knew if I did, my drinking days were over. And I didn’t want people to see [our family] fail.”

Her husband was a church elder, she led the children’s church choir, and they were beloved business-people in their small Michigan community. She said, “I couldn’t imagine letting anybody see what was really going on. I didn’t want to go to rehab because . . . everybody knows if you go to rehab, including my kids.”

It took Hoppen four more years after recognizing her dependence to commit to sobriety. Her story as a churchgoing suburban mom concealing alcohol addiction is increasingly common. In 2023, around 9 percent of adult women in the US struggled with alcoholism—about 11.7 million women. This means that in an average church of 500 people, at least 20 women attending likely struggle with alcohol dependence as well.

Alcohol abuse is rarely discussed with or even known by a woman’s closest friends or spouse. Until recent decades, alcohol brands marketed themselves primarily to men. In the 1990s, however, the industry recognized that women were an under-tapped market. This led to the introduction of sugary drinks for “entry-level drinkers.” A decade later, “skinny” versions of premade cocktails launched for women who wanted low-calorie options. Rates of alcohol use disorder rose by 83% between 2002 and 2013, on par with the rise in feminized alcohol marketing.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Our silent shame robs others of community, solidarity, and support. Churches have an opportunity to meet women in the midst of their brokenness. People ultimately just want to belong, feel seen, and not be judged in their brokenness.

The cacophony of slot machines, dice rolls, and card shuffles is what usually comes to mind when people think of gambling. The more pervasive way to gamble that has become more popular over the years is with your cellphone.

The computers in our pockets provide us with 24/7 access to sites and apps that facilitate our bets for us. People can’t even watch a sports game on their phone without being inundated with ads for fantasy sports platforms. Why not combine phone addiction with gambling? What’s the worst that could happen?

Writing in The Atlantic, Christine Emba anticipates the dreadful impact:

In a sense, Americans have been training themselves for years to become eager users of gambling tech. Smartphone-app design relies on the “variable reward” method of habit formation to get people hooked—the same mechanism that casinos use to keep people playing games and pulling levers. When Instagram sends notifications about likes or worthwhile posts, people are impelled to open the app and start scrolling; when sports-betting apps send push alerts about fantastic parlays, people are coaxed into placing one more bet.

Smartphones have thus habituated people to an expectation of stimulation—and potential reward—at every moment. Timothy Fong, a UCLA psychiatry professor and a co-director of the university’s gambling-studies program, said, “You’re constantly surrounded by the ability to change your neurochemistry by a simple click. There’s this idea that we have to have excessive dopamine with every experience in our life.”

The frictionless ease of mobile sports betting takes advantage of this. It has become easy, even ordinary, to experience the excitement of gambling everywhere. It isn’t enough anymore to be anxious about the final score of the Saturday night football game—let’s up the ante and bet on the winning team!

But at what cost? Indeed, what happens when we begin to think of every scenario in our lives in terms of risk/reward and the dispassionate calculations of probability? This can turn life itself into some cosmic game, twisting relationships into scenarios we scheme and manipulate as we chase the dopamine rush of a winning bet. The easy accessibility to gambling won’t just affect us personally, for it can also change the culture around us.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As online gambling infiltrates society (and the church), there are more opportunities for temptation, people can hide their gambling addiction by not leaving their home. How many secret addicted gamblers are there in our churches?

According to court documents, Sean Higgins had been working from home when he fielded an upsetting call with his mother about a personal matter. But he’d also been drinking, which according to his wife, had become a pattern as of late. So clearly there were many issues that contributed to the sense of chaos and discord in his life. But none were more destructive than his choice to get behind the wheel of his Jeep and drive, while talking on the phone, with an open container of alcohol in the car.

Later that evening, Higgins was driving down a rural road when the two vehicles in front of him slowed and veered to the left to avoid two bicyclists in the roadway. But Higgins was impatient, so he instead accelerated and tried to pass those vehicles on the right. Higgins didn’t see the two cyclists until it was too late. He drove his vehicle into them, and both cyclists were killed.

This instance of vehicular death would be a tragedy under any set of circumstances, but it just so happened that those men were Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau. Johnny played hockey for the Columbus Blue Jackets of the National Hockey League, and he and his brother Matthew were scheduled to be groomsmen for their sister’s wedding in Philadelphia the next day. Johnny and Matt were both married; Johnny had two children and Matt’s wife was pregnant at the time of the crash.

“Johnny and Matt were incredible hockey players and students, but even more amazing human beings,” said Gloucester principal Thomas Iacovone Jr. in a statement. “Their loss will be felt forever by the entire Gloucester Catholic community and by me personally. I will continue to pray for them and their families during this unimaginable tragedy.”

Sean Higgins served in the United States Army as a second lieutenant for four years, and had earned a Bronze Star during a 15-month tour of duty in Iraq. He also served as a major in the New Jersey National Guard. During a recorded phone call from jail, Higgins admitted that he had a problem with aggressive driving.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Given Higgins’ domestic conflicts and propensity for drinking, it’s obvious he had issues adjusting to civilian life. If only he’d had the humility to ask for help sooner, he might have developed a set of healthier coping habits that could have prevented this tragedy.

The commune of Christiania, in the heart of Copenhagen, Denmark, was supposed to be like Paradise. But life in this fallen world is always impacted by human sin.

Founded in 1971, Christiania was devised as a post-60s anarchistic utopia. It was a place where people could live outside of Denmark’s market economy, free to build their houses where and how they wanted, to sell marijuana for a living, and to live as they pleased as long as they didn’t harm their neighbors. Denmark’s government oscillated between attempting to bring the community to heel or turning a blind eye as residents flouted property laws and drug laws.

But now, after 50 years, with worsening gang violence and fresh attempts by the government to normalize the commune, some residents see their dream of an alternative society fading. The infamous Pusher Street, once operated mostly by residents but now overrun by gangs, may be the first domino to fall.

One lifelong resident said, “Growing up in Christiania was the best childhood ever. We had freedom. Pusher Street was very nice back then … Five to seven years ago [drug dealers] got much tougher. Now they only want profit. They don’t bring good vibes.”

Christiania has long embraced cannabis while shunning more dangerous substances. But as gangs overtook the drug trade, harder drugs made their way in, along with some of the violence of organized crime. After a recent shooting, Christiania’s residents, who operate a consensus democracy where decisions are made by unanimous assent in town-hall-style meetings, settled on two conclusions: that Pusher Street should be shuttered permanently, and that the state should intervene—an extraordinary step for the anti-establishment community.

Possible Preaching Angles:

This shows the power of original sin. Even when we try to recreate “paradise,” it never lasts for long.

Potbellied pigs are running wild in Delaware, alarming agricultural officials and raising the risk of damage and disease. The problem started when people bought the pigs as pets, but then quickly discovered they couldn’t control them. The Delaware Department of Agriculture said, “Owners who can no longer manage these animals are likely to relinquish ownership and allow them to roam.”

Sellers often mislead buyers by calling the pigs micro pigs, teacup pigs, and mini pig. But potbellied pigs can weigh up to 200 pounds and can live up to 20 years. The pigs can reproduce at a young age. Female potbellied pigs can become pregnant at three months old, and males can breed at eight weeks of age. The wild pigs dig up and destroy crops. Feral swine can also leave fecal material in waterways and wetlands, contaminating water sources and increasing disease risks for humans, wildlife, and livestock.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In a similar way, we think that we can allow small sins into our lives because they are manageable or controllable, only to find out that they are not. They will run wild.

The following was taken from a newsletter for a medical group, not a Christian organization:

Do you indulge in a glass of wine every now and then? You are not alone. More than 85% of adults report drinking alcohol at some point. In 2020, alcohol consumption in the U.S. spiked, with heavy drinking increasing by 41% among women.

Alcohol affects your body quickly. It is absorbed through the lining of your stomach into your bloodstream. Once there, it spreads into tissues throughout your body. Alcohol reaches your brain in only five minutes and starts to affect you within 10 minutes.

After 20 minutes, your liver starts processing alcohol. On average, the liver can metabolize 1 ounce of alcohol every hour. A blood alcohol level of 0.08, the legal limit for drinking, takes around five and a half hours to leave your system. Alcohol will stay in urine for up to 80 hours and in hair follicles for up to three months. Drivers with a BAC of 0.08 or more are 11 times more likely to be killed in a single-vehicle crash than non-drinking drivers.

Many have discussed whether or not radiation from cell phones causes cancer. Author Douglas Fields writes about the fact that some people are fearful of radiation from their cell phones, but that fear indicates the lack of understanding in regard to dosage:

There is a vast difference, for example, between a microwave oven and a cell phone. Just try cooking a burger with your phone. The word “radiation” strikes fear in the heart of the average person. But radiation is a normal part of our environment, cast down on us together with the warming rays of the sun. Radiation emanates from the smoke detectors in our homes and from dishes that use uranium salts in their ceramic pigments. But all are perfectly safe because the radiation levels are low.

Still, some are skeptical and they recommend not allowing children to use cell phones except in emergencies, and to avoid carrying cell phones on the body. Fields points out:

The debate and research go on. This seems strange given the abundance of known agents and activities that do cause cancer but fail to strike the same fear in the hearts of most people. Alcohol, tobacco, sunburn, toxic organic chemicals in industrial and home products are all real but accepted risk. Yet the cell phone and invisible radiation from power lines scare many. Looked at objectively, the reason is simply fear of the unknown. Everyone understands alcohol and sunburn; few understand radiation, and so they fear it.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Christians wonder, how serious is friendship with their world? How much sin will hurt me? How can I be in the world but not of the world? Low doses of sin can be overlooked, but they can combine for a very serious effect in our spiritual lives.

Eight-year-old Aryanna Schneeberg was playing in her backyard near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when she was struck in the back with an arrow. A neighbor was attempting to shoot a squirrel, but his weapon missed its intended target and instead penetrated the child’s lung, spleen, stomach, and liver. She bears the scars that come with surviving such an injury.

We ought to think of Aryanna every time we hear a preacher explaining the Greek word for sin, hamartia, as “missing the mark.” Like most pulpit clichés, this one points to something that’s partly right. The problem, though, is that … we think of a bucolic setting where we are shooting our arrows toward a target on a bale of hay. The metaphor is almost comforting: We see ourselves not as criminals or rebels but as being off our game now and then. We reach into our quiver for one more chance to get it right.

That’s not how the Bible describes sin. The Bible says sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4). When it categorizes sins, it consistently does so in terms that imply both perpetrators and victims: enmity, dissension, oppression of orphans and widows, adultery, covetousness. In that light, sin is less like target practice on some isolated piece of countryside and more like loosing arrows on a city sidewalk in the midst of a pressing crowd. All around us are bodies, writhing or dead, struck down by our errant arrows.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In a sermon on sin, a preacher might also quote the Puritan John Owen: “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.” That’s true too. And yet it doesn’t quite say enough: Our sin might also be killing those around us. “The wages of sin is death,” the Bible tells us (Rom. 6:23). That death might not simply be one’s own, but also one’s neighbors.

According to Lifeway research, among Protestants with evangelical beliefs who attend church monthly or more:

74% agree Christians drinking alcohol can cause other believers to stumble

33% say they drink alcohol

29% agree the Bible bans alcohol

An article in The Atlantic claims that America is in one of "our periodic crises over drinking." Journalist Kate Julian details the crisis:

Since the turn of the millennium, alcohol consumption has risen steadily, in a reversal of its long decline throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Before the pandemic, some aspects of this shift seemed sort of fun, as long as you didn’t think about them too hard. In the 20th century, you might have been able to buy wine at the supermarket, but you couldn’t drink it in the supermarket. Now some grocery stores have wine bars, beer on tap, signs inviting you to “shop ’n’ sip,” and carts with cup holders.

Actual bars have decreased in number, but drinking is acceptable in all sorts of other places it didn’t used to be: Salons and boutiques dole out cheap cava in plastic cups. Movie theaters serve alcohol, Starbucks serves alcohol, zoos serve alcohol. Moms carry coffee mugs that say things like “This might be wine,” though for discreet day-drinking, the better move may be one of the new hard seltzers, a watered-down malt liquor dressed up—for precisely this purpose—as a natural soda.

Even before COVID-19 arrived on our shores, the consequences of all this were catching up with us. From 1999 to 2017, the number of alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. doubled, to more than 70,000 a year—making alcohol one of the leading drivers of the decline in American life expectancy. These numbers are likely to get worse: During the pandemic, frequency of drinking rose, as did sales of hard liquor. By February (2021), nearly a quarter of Americans said they’d drunk more over the past year as a means of coping with stress.

PBS’ The Great American Read is an eight-part series that explores America’s 100 best-loved novels. Some of the episodes explore specific trends. One of which is that “Americans can’t seem to get enough of novels with notorious villains and monsters. Why are we drawn to these stories about evil-doers? What do they reveal about our own dark impulses?”

Just think of the villains in these novels: Frankenstein, Crime and Punishment, The Godfather, Stephen King’s The Stand, Game of Thrones, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Harry Potter.

Various literary critics made the following comments on why they’re drawn to evil characters:

-“Evil is interesting. Evil is exciting. Our heart rate increases. Blood flow changes.”

-“There are villains in literature because there are villains in life. They allow us to see a little bit of what it might be like go beyond the edges of accepted society.”

-“The monster is very human. You can almost sympathize with the monster.”

-“We identify with the villain. You can understand a little bit about what has made them and what has shaped them. Their monstrosity doesn’t seem foreign.”

Officers filed charges of driving while intoxicated against Christopher Greyshock, a resident of West Milford, after his rear-end collision into another vehicle injured a woman. When officers initially encountered Greyshock, they found him “staggering and swaying, unable to walk straight, and in danger of falling onto the highway.”

That, combined with the strong smell of alcohol on his breath, prompted a field sobriety test, which he promptly failed by registering a blood alcohol level of 0.13, well beyond the state legal limit of 0.08. The open bottle of whiskey that police found in his car just served as further confirmation.

What was Greyshock’s excuse for drinking? During the field sobriety test, he was quoted as saying, “I drunk too much because the [New York] Jets suck.” And while his actions behind the wheel were wrong, his analysis of the pro football team was spot-on. The NY Jets were defeated by the Buffalo Bills by an embarrassing final score of 41-10.

Potential Preaching Angles:

Drinking to cope with misery is a common tactic, but ultimately we are all responsible for our choices. Blaming a poor choice on another person just makes the problem worse.

Author Rosaria Butterfield says that being born with a sin nature is a little bit like inheriting a garden. In a radio interview Butterfield put it this way:

Let's say that you inherited an enchanting garden. And for 10 years, you just let it thrive. You let it do anything it wanted. You never pruned back the weeds. You never got rid of the pests. You never worked with the roses. You just let it quote-unquote "thrive."

And after 10 years, what is it? It's a disaster. It might even be way past the point of no return. And you go to a master gardener and you say, "Hey, this is not fair. I want my money back. I just did everything I could to let this garden thrive. I let it do exactly what it wanted." You know, the master gardener's going to laugh at you and say, "Buddy, gardens come with weeds! It's part of its nature and by failing to deal with that, you destroyed it."

In her blog post titled "So I Quit Drinking," Christian writer Sarah Bessey gives a powerful example of habits that, perhaps not sinful in themselves, become sinful to us. She begins by admitting that she had been a lover and consumer of wine throughout adulthood, and it "never bothered [her] in the least."

Bessey continues:

[But] I have learned that when you are walking with Jesus, the Holy Spirit is always up to something. And when it comes to conviction, I have found the Spirit to be gentle but relentless. Change and transformation is an ongoing process … We begin to sense that this Thing that used to be okay is no longer okay. The Thing that used to mean freedom has become bondage …

Because a year ago, I knew God wanted me to stop drinking. … Oh, I had all of the excuses for why I could keep enjoying my wine in the evenings—I work hard, I give so much, I'm not an alcoholic, I'm never hung-over, it doesn't affect my life, it's social, it's fun, it's in the Bible for pity's sake! I began to be haunted by the writer of Hebrews who said, " … let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us."

I began to wonder why I was resisting throwing off the "weight" of alcohol, why I was so determined to keep running my race with this habit that had begun to feel so heavy. In my soul, I could see the Holy Spirit practically jogging alongside of me to say every now and again: "Aren't you ready to put that heavy weight down yet? I think it's time you stopped this one. … It looks to me like it's getting heavier the longer you hold on."

Bessey mentions the dangers of legalism, but then she concludes, "But in our steering away from legalism, I wonder if we left the road to holiness or began to forget that God also cares about what we do and how we do it and why. Conviction is less about condemnation than it is about invitation. It's an invitation into freedom. It's an invitation into wholeness."

As kids, we almost all inevitably faced the same temptation at one point or another—to slip our favorite candy bar into our pocket at the store without paying for it. So easy, and harmless, right? That's what Idris Allen, a 38-year-old New Jersey man, seemed to be thinking , when he robbed the exact same 7-Eleven store at knifepoint four different times in four days—just to avoid paying for candy. It started on December 8, 2015 and escalated to the third heist December 11th consisting of "several Reese's Peanut Butter Cups."

Here's how one newspaper described the fourth and final theft:

Approximately, 14 hours later on the same day, the defendant wearing the same clothing from the robbery the night before, came back to the 7-Eleven, went to the back of the store, took merchandise, and left the store, only to be followed by the shift manager from the first robbery, who jumped over the counter, alerted the police and pointed him out around the corner.

Allen pleaded guilty to first-degree armed robbery.

Potential Preaching Angles: How representative of humanity's battle with sin! Over and over, "as a dog returns to its vomit," we return to the same sins, even though they never succeed in satisfying us like we seem to think they will.

In an interview for Rolling Stone, actor Jeff Bridges was asked what advice he wished he would have received at age 20. Bridges said:

I got the advice—I just didn't take it! My dad would say, "It's all about habit, Jeff. You gotta get into good habits." And I said, "No, Dad, you gotta live each moment. Live it as the first one and be fresh." And he says, "That's a wonderful thought, but that's not what we are. We are habitual creatures. It's about developing these grooves." As I age, I can see his point. What you practice, that's what you become.

Can we be guilty for sinful responses that seem to erupt in us automatically? Can we really consider sin voluntary if it is not consciously chosen? Consider the following illustration of how unintentional sin works:

Trained instincts—that's how fighter pilots can react immediately to rapidly changing situations as they operate multi-million dollar war machines. When a threat aircraft is closing in, there's no time for pilots to reason through what to do. They have to rely on instinct—but not just natural instinct. They need instincts shaped deep within then through years of regiment. The countless little decisions they make in the cockpit are automatic, but that doesn't mean they're involuntary. The pilot voluntarily trained for them, and in the cockpit he reaps the instinctive benefits of that training.

Like the fighter pilot's hours of training, our hearts are under a regimen of beliefs and values that don't align with Scripture, drilled into us through what we put in our heads, what we receive as wisdom from other sources, what we accept as normal from culture. All of these shape our unintentional sin.

Before walking out of jail a free man in February, Albert Woodfox spent 43 years almost without pause in an isolation cell, becoming the longest standing solitary confinement prisoner in America. He had no view of the sky from inside his 6 foot by 9 foot concrete box, no human contact, and taking a walk meant pacing from one end of the cell to the other and back again.

Then in April 2016 he found himself on a beach in Galveston, Texas, in the company of a friend. He stood marveling at all the beachgoers under a cloudless sky, and stared out over the Gulf of Mexico as it stretched far out to the horizon. "You could hear the tide and the water coming in," he says. "It was so strange, walking on the beach and all these people and kids running around."

Of all the terrifying details of Woodfox's four decades of solitary incarceration … perhaps the most chilling aspect of all is what he says now. Two months after the state of Louisiana set him free on his 69th birthday, he says he sometimes wishes he was back in that cell.

"Oh yeah! Yeah!" he says passionately when asked whether he sometimes misses his life in lockdown. "You know, human beings … feel more comfortable in areas they are secure. In a cell you have a routine, you pretty much know what is going to happen, when it's going to happen, but in society it's difficult, it's looser. So there are moments when, yeah, I wish I was back in the security of a cell." He pauses, then adds: "I mean, it does that to you."

In his book Dreamland, journalist Sam Quinones points to one paragraph of false information that helped pave the way for the surge in addicts to the highly addictive opiate OxyContin. Before 1980, the rule for prescribing narcotic painkillers was as little as possible for as short a time as possible. Doctors were taught that the risk of addiction was simply too high. As Mr. Quinones recounts, this thinking changed when Dr. Hershel Jick and a colleague submitted a one-paragraph letter to the New England Journal of Medicine noting that, according to their data, of 12,000 patients treated with opiates in a Boston hospital before 1979, "only four had grown addicted."

But Quinones writes, "There were no data about how often, how long, or at what dose these patients were given opiates. The paragraph simply cited the numbers and made no claim beyond that."

Cited and recited, Dr. Jick's letter bolstered a growing push within medicine to treat pain more aggressively. By the time the pharmaceutical company Purdue Frederick introduced a time-release painkiller called OxyContin in 1996, the accepted wisdom was that opiates were nearly non-addictive. Purdue "set about promoting OxyContin as virtually risk-free and a solution to the problems patients presented doctors with every day," Doctors—often primary-care physicians not specially trained in pain management—duly began to prescribe the drug for patients in chronic pain.

The results have been disastrous. "Oxy prescriptions for chronic pain rose from 670,000 in 1997 to 6.2 million in 2002," writes Mr. Quinones. "While still prescribed for cancer pain, OxyContin was now also offered for the sorts of aches for which one might have previously taken an aspirin." As a result, the rates of opiate addiction in big and small cities across America have soared.